Monday, January 30, 2017

Sharon's Ride, and this week's schedule

Mahalo to Michael Lau for these pics from Sharon's Ride.

Sunday was the annual Sharon's Ride for Epilepsy, which I did in place of my schedule tempo ride. I chose to ride it hard, which had the unfortunate side effect of my not stopping for the usual pictures. Lucky for me Michael Lau took a bunch.

I found out Saturday at packet pickup that the course had been cut to 50K but as it turned out the intense, unpredictable wind made up for it. Here are some of my stats:

The thing that jumps out at me is the Normalized Power vs. Average Power, and the corresponding Variability Index of 1.0. Naturally power goes up and down like a yo-yo, but these numbers suggest that I rode at a relatively steady effort. If I had pushed had a bit, then cruised a bit, my average power could be the same as here but my NP would be lower, something like 130 watts. Along with that my VI would have been non-zero. I am still not totally clear how to interpret Efficiency Factor, but 1.0 seems to be ideal and this was pretty close.

The original plan for the day, before it was an organized ride, was a 2:30 ride with 2 x 20 min intervals in zone 3. This was not a day to do precisely timed intervals, but I tried to ride in zone three a lot, limited by road conditions and fatigue. Here are my time in zone results:

The striking thing to me is that, just like last Monday's tempo ride, my heart rate zone seems high compared to my power zone and my RPE. The situation where they all agree is climbing, such as Tantalus. If we round off the duration to two hours and take percentages, I spent 26 minutes in zone 3, which was my goal. Going by heart rate, I spent 25 minutes in zone 3 and about 70 minutes in zone 4. This feels like something to be concerned about, but I am not sure that, given my age and riding history, this is to be expected. Again, I did not feel like I was anywhere near threshold, which is how zone 4 should feel. Time will tell.